'Review Thomas Quick's case': Social Democrats

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The Social Democrats want the government to appoint an independent commission to review the controversial case of convicted serial killer Thomas Quick, who has since been acquitted of several murders.

“Enough serious facts are now emerging to warrant another look at this. In the end it is about the trust in the Swedish legal system. If it does turn out that Quick has been convicted of a number of crimes he never committed, we have a number of perpetrators that walked free,” Morgan Johansson, head of the Riksdag's Committee on Justice (Justitieutskottet) to news agency TT.

Johansson thinks that the commission should investigate whether anyone has been lacking in their responsibility in the police investigations, if there is a flaw in the current procedures and if something in that case ought to be changed in the legal system.

“One has to ask oneself how it could go this far without anyone noticing that there may have been grave flaws to the investigations. After all he was convicted for eight murders by six district courts,” Johansson said.

Minister for Justice Beatrice Ask is also open to an investigation into the case but said to TT that she wants to wait until the remaining applications for re-trial have been processed.

“I am very concerned about this case,” Ask told TT.

“There are so many questions that need to be dealt with. A person who has been convicted of heinous crimes that lawyers later find he can't possibly have committed. That means that we have a number of crimes where the guilty party has walked free. And then there is the question how this could happen in today's legal system,” she said.

Quick, who has changed his name to Sture Bergwall, was convicted of eight murders between the years 1994 and 2001, but has since been acquitted of three of them.

Retrials have been granted for another two cases, and in June the last three applications for retrial were submitted.